While I was grilling the customary Memorial Day tenderloin, I ducked into the house to escape the insane heat (temps were in the high 90s all day). My darling B was pan-frying onion crisps to garnish the steak and the hot oil had fogged the air in the house to the point that the evening sunshine cut slanting rays through the windows in the front door and the display screen in the living room.

It's been a long time since I've seen a modern car, particularly one made by Detroit, that will make me stop cold in my tracks and drool. This Chevrolet SSR was parked along Mifflin Street during my lunch hour last Friday.

If the capital building were designed today, would it look like ...

... this?

A walk around capital square first thing in the morning is a treat.

I've been sloppy drunk, and I've been awful tired, but I've never, ever been as relaxed as this, and I can't imagine how I ever will.

Looking Up

This oak tree has been hunched over like a question mark for longer than I've been breathing in and out, and I just noticed it today as I was taking my afternoon break in the form of a short walk around capital square.

Looking Down

It looks like an ash leaf, but I didn't see any ash trees on the square, so I'm not sure which tree's leaf was immortalized in the sidewalk on Mifflin Street.

Looking Up Again

These terra cotta faces look out across the square from the upper story of the building at 7 Pickney Street. Looks a bit like the Green Man, doesn't it?

Out on the Stoop

Of the many wonderful places in Our Humble O-Bode, this back stoop is a great place to take your cup of coffee and set a spell. Barb and the cats loves to watch the yard through the many windows; on warmer days, she swings the door open to give her an even better view through the screen. Her basil plant is doing very well in the sun at the far corner of the room, too.

And what does she watch through her binoculars?

We've got rabbits living in a warren under a rotting stump out by the lilac bushes. So far we've counted at least two adults and three youngsters, and when they're out on the lawn to get their morning silfay, Bonkers will jump from window to window, jockeying for the best view, and Barb will squeal, "Bunnies!" and call everybody into the room to watch.

Birds! Our neighborhood has had about fifty years to establish a thick cover of trees, and many of the yards have gardens, attracting grackles, cowbirds, cardinals, jays, nigers and sparrows — lots and lots of sparrows.

I can't think of a place I've been in Wisconsin where I haven't heard a mourning dove, and our yard is no exception. Even in a cold rain, this dove showed up for the morning shift to sing her song.

The yard has not a few flowers all around. The back yard is bounded on all three sides by lilac bushes, and they're in full flower this month.

Next month I'll be out there with a pruning shears and brush saw to trim the dead wood and overgrowth. heavy sigh

Even on a rainy day, the back stoop is a favorite place to sit and watch the reflections off the sheen across the deck and the ripples in the puddles that collect here and there.

At the coffee shop yesterday noon:

When it comes down to the last stale bagel, they should swap out "day-old" for "lonely, lost, and desperately in need of a home."

The slate-gray edifice of the state office building looms against the slate-gray overcast of an afternoon sky.

It's no Chrysler Building, but the state office building is ornamented with and art deco facade that gives it a lot of character and makes it one of my favorite downtown buildings. The city-county building (next to it on the right) is a practically featureless, pale blockhouse in comparison.

The building's design makes it appear large and yet reserved. Stately, I guess. You can make out more details of the art deco design.

Bonkers calls dibs on the warm sunny patch.

What is it about a napping cat that makes people smile? Nobody in our family can look at Bonkers sleeping in the sun and suppress at least a grin. He is the picture of contentment when he has a warm spot where he can curl up like a rolley-pollie and snooze until the sun slides too far away.

(Just how do you spell "rolley-pollie" without the first half mispronounced by most of the population? When it's "roll" nobody has any difficulty saying it right, but when it's "rolley" or "rollie" or "rollee," almost anybody I know would say RAH lee. So a standard spelling, please, for the bug that sounds like ROE lee POE lee.)

When I come back, I want to be a housecat, but not just any housecat: I want to be Bonkers, right here, in the sun, at this moment. What a life.

... and then, whatever the polar opposite of "contentment" is, that's a hungry cat. Bonkers is one of the warmest, friendliest, lapmost cats I've ever met, but when he wants his kibble he's the most relentlessly annoying, bar none, of any pet. I would never intentionally hurt a pet, but when he's hungry and underfoot it's almost impossible to walk to the kitchen tap to get a drink without punting him between the goalposts. There must be a way to cure him of this, but short of feeding him until he explodes, I don't know what it could be.

I hate being a showoff, but I can't resist - some of the views around our new home are really very photogenic, and I don't think it's only because I'm a proud papa.

These wildflowers grow in the grass strip between our garage and the neighbor's yard. The dandelions I recognize, but I don't know what the plants with the blue blossoms are called. I'll have to do a little learning after having a good look around.

The bumblebees love these blue flowers; I was trying to catch a snapshot of the one that darted away just before I clicked the shutter.

Packing out of the rental apartment. We've been living here for nine months, but we won't miss it for a second. So long, broken fridge door handle! Farewell, laundry room as big as a phone booth! See ya, stinky sewage-soaked basement rug! Good-bye, garage door that doesn't open from outside!

The crew that made our move from the apartment possible! From left, Barb, Jim, Darren, Sue, Carrie and Tim. Behind them, Darren's monster trailer, pulled by Darren's monster pickup truck, into which all our belongings fit without the least bit of trouble. We're outta here!

The new abode was ready in nearly all respects, with a few small touch-ups needed here and there. Tim painted the kitchen cupboards for his Mom.

Most of hour household goods have been in storage for almost a year! The challenge: Make it all fit into our snug little home.

Moving our few possessions from the apartment was easy; stowing all the household goods we had held in storage was quite another problem altogether. Barb spent days trying to figure out how to arrange all the kitchen utensils, pots and pans, plates and flatware so that it would fit in the older, smaller kitchen layout of our home.

It's not a home without a cat or two underfoot ... or, in this case, on your seat.

The missus and I would like to express our kindest thanks for your congratulations and shared stories of home ownership.

We're just a little giddy about the prospect of owning our own home again. Maybe you can tell?

Barb watches happily as I sign away our paychecks for the next thirty years. We felt much less nervous about it this time around (we were homeowners in a previous life).

The sun rose on our last full day in Cottage Grove today. After the closing, we ate lunch on the kitchen floor of our very own house.

One of the oddest-looking buildings in Madison has got to be Best Western's "Inn On The Park," the hotel at the corner of Main and Carroll streets. If you're walking south along Carroll and look up, you'll see a rather boring-looking typical hotel building with no distinguishing features, other than the odd-sized picture window below the top floor.

Draw a little closer, though, and you see a different building ... it almost looks like two buildings: one slightly more interesting high-rise with wider, more visually interesting bay windows on the lake side, being swallowed by the blocky, boring chunk of a building, which has the appearance of having descended from space, possibly to transmogrify all our beautiful old architecture into Soviet-style block houses.

Look at that lovely scalloped corner, fighting to hold off the blockification crushing down on it. There was so much potential for this building until the architectural firm of Nickolai Ivanovich Sovietsky & Assoc. took over the design project and turned it into an experiment in nuveau concret.

Madison's renovated Museum of Contemporary Art opened last weekend. It seems to be most well-known for the glass prow-like corner that sticks out from the corner of Henry and State Streets. A glass stairway winds its way up the inside of the prow, where visitors can pause to watch the crowd on State Street, or just stand around in a group on a landing and chat.

The museum had some art, too, but the glass prow and the stairway was visually much more engaging. Make of that what you will.

As you walk up you can see each tread edge-on; they appear to be several layers of glass laminated for strength.

It's an intriguing idea and it was executed wonderfully, but if I hear one more person call them a "stairway to heaven" I'll puke.

From inside the prow a visitor can see three other triangle buildings: the one on the right is a Noodles restaurant, directly out front there's the world-famous Triangle Market, and just off to the left there's an Italian restaurant, Tutto Pasta Trattoria.

One last look back ...

A fetching view of Lake Mendota from the steps of the capital, looking up North Hamilton Street.

What's that bit of orange, caught in the tree to the right?

The tulips on the north lawn are yellow; those on the south lawn are red & pink. They've all blossomed this week, just in case you want to plan a trip to see them next year.

One last view of the capitol, the trees leafing out and lady Forward shining in the sun.

"That shall also content me."

We made a "pre-closing inspection" of our soon-to-be home sweet home last Saturday. The seller has moved nearly everything of his out of the house, with the notable exception of about a dozen pairs of shoes. The few remaining odds and ends were apparently destined for the dumpster parked in the driveway.

We're counting the hours now ...

We've moved house so many times to date that we know this spacious-looking room will soon be impassibly clogged with stacks of boxes and haphazardly-arranged furniture. We think of that, and sigh.

But it'll be our clogged room. No more living like a peeg in Potter's Field!

I'll be grilling bratwurst on that deck soon enough! Okay, technically I'll be grilling brats on a Weber BBQ, because the deck by itself doesn't get nearly hot enough, but the Weber, the brats and I will all be on the deck.

And B is already planning to scatter pots of herbs here, to catch the morning sun.

To Market, To Market


My Darling B inspects the herbs on offer at the Dane County Farmer's Market, which opened for the season this weekend. She's already loaded up on baked goods, and she'll move on to the flowering plants next.

Grace Episcopal church through the weirdly-backlit oaks on the capital lawn.

The morning sunrise is reflected off the condos across Mifflin Street.

Maples are noticeably budding out, and the lawn is a beautiful spring green.

Where are the posts?

For some obscure, technical reason that must have to do with encroaching senility, I seem to have unlearned how to post photos to this site. I get the pop-up, I browse for the photos, I hit the upload button, and then ... nothing. No uploaded photo, just a blank page, and I can't figure out what's going wrong. For the time being, I'm loading photos up to a page on my web site.

Snow Returns to Madison



Everybody I knew was dreading the storm that was supposed to bring six inches of snow to Madison shortly after midnight last night. I'm possibly the only person in town who was disappointed to look out his window this morning to find a snowless driveway.

The storm struck shortly after seven o'clock this morning and left town in the late afternoon after dumping only an inch or so.

We could have had so much more fun, but here are a couple snaps of what we got.

The gable on the roof of Grace Episcopal facing Carroll Street, sporting a new throw of snow.